When the first notes of a student band rang out on the University of Arizona campus in 1902, music was woven into the fabric of the institution. At the time, the ensemble was tied to the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, and their first public performance was at a battalion parade. What began as a military band soon evolved into something far greater: the seed of a cultural tradition that would come to define life at the university.
By the 1920s, original fight songs like “Fight! Wildcats! Fight!” and alma mater classics such as “All Hail, Arizona” helped solidify a shared identity for the university community. Over the decades, the band program gained national recognition, even appearing at the first Super Bowl in 1967. These milestones weren’t just about performance—they represented the role of music in bringing people together and amplifying the university’s spirit.
As the campus grew, so did its musical ambitions. What started as a single band program expanded into what is now the Fred Fox School of Music, part of the College of Fine Arts. Today, the School of Music embraces a mission far beyond performance. It fosters creativity, scholarship, and outreach, preparing musicians to engage with both tradition and innovation. Students and faculty alike work across disciplines, collaborate with communities, and use music as a lens for exploring the challenges of our world.
One project that exemplifies this vision is Watershed Soundscape, an initiative under the Arizona Institute for Resilience. The project transforms the science of watersheds into a multisensory experience, blending sound, visual art, and cultural perspectives to explore the relationship between humans and the environment. Instead of sheet music or a marching formation, here the score is the natural world itself—the sounds of flowing rivers, desert rains, and human interpretations of water’s role in our lives.
This project reflects how far the School of Music has come in its 120-year journey. From playing at parades to addressing environmental resilience through sound, the school has continually reimagined what it means to make music. It demonstrates that music at the University of Arizona is not only about performance halls and practice rooms—it’s about listening to the world, interpreting it, and sharing it in ways that inspire dialogue and understanding.
Looking back, it’s clear that the university’s early musicians could not have imagined the diverse, interdisciplinary role that music would one day play on campus. Yet the same spirit that drove them—the desire to connect, to express, and to shape community—still drives the School of Music today. Projects like Watershed Soundscape are more than artistic experiments; they are reminders that the history of music at UArizona is still being written, one note at a time.